Page 335 of Don’t Say Mafia

And thirty thousand feet above the world, I’d never felt more alive.

Jagger

I would never forget the look in Eden’s eyes when we stepped out of the bedroom. Not because of what we’d just done—though that alone was worth commemorating—but because Blanche was standing there in her orthopedic shoes with a tray of brownies like this was a church social and we hadn’t just defiled a multimillion-dollar aircraft ten feet away.

Eden’s hair was slightly wrecked, and her cheeks were flushed in a way that made my dick hard all over again. She had a dazed, floating expression that made it very clear she’d just been well fucked.

“Oh good,” Blanche said brightly. “You’re alive. I was about to assume there was turbulence back there I wasn’t feeling.”

Eden made a sound that I’m fairly certain wasn’t a real word, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

Blanche didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She simply held out the tray like she’d been doing this since the invention of aviation.

I loved her.

The septuagenarian staffing decision had not been random. It had been born of experience. Traumatic, couch-related experience.

The idea had first taken root after flying on Lincoln Daniels’s plane. At the time, I’d thought it was strange that he’d hired an entire roster of elegant grandmothers to handle in-flight service. I’d assumed it was some wholesome branding quirk. Maybe he liked the vibe. Maybe he had unresolved childhood issues.

Then I’d learned the real reason.

No one flirts with your wife when the flight attendant looks like she might knit you a sweater and judge your life choices at the same time.

I’d privately rolled my eyes . . . until the day I walked out of my own plane’s bathroom and found one of my flight attendants naked on the couch, legs spread, and smiling as if she’d just won a raffle.

She had not won anything. She had been unemployed before we landed, in fact.

After that little episode, Lincoln’s grandmother brigade started looking like a stroke of genius.

Blanche had come highly recommended by a retired senator who described her as “discreet and terrifying in equal measure.” She’d interviewed me like she was vetting a charity case, asking about my travel frequency, my expectations, and my boundaries.

I hired her on the spot.

Blanche would never strip on my furniture.

Blanche would never flirt with me.

More importantly now, Blanche would never flirt with Eden.

That was the real brilliance of Lincoln Daniels’s plan.

Eden was still standing there, staring at the brownies as though they were evidence in a trial.

Blanche tilted her head kindly. “Brownie, dear?”

Eden glanced at me, mortified, but I was having the time of my life.

“You should take one,” I said, perfectly straight-faced.

Blanche cleared her throat gently. “Hydration is also advisable.”

Eden managed, “Thank you,” in a tone that suggested she’d prefer to be dropped midair.

Blanche smiled with the unshakeable confidence of a woman who had seen decades of human behavior and found most of it predictable. “You’re very welcome.”

I took a brownie from the tray and nodded at Blanche. “You’re a national treasure.”

“I know,” Blanche replied without hesitation.